K-12 parents are all too familiar with the overwhelm and anticipation that comes with the transition into a new school year. Bozeman families make an especially difficult transition - leaving a beautiful summer spent camping, hiking, and recreating for the classroom.
As educators and academic mentors, we’ve had the opportunity to observe the strategies that separate students who are able to navigate the ups and downs of a new school year smoothly. The following are our recommendations for setting your student up for success:
Tips for a Smooth Transition:
- Start adjusting your daily schedule a few weeks before the school year starts to prevent sleep loss in the first few weeks of school.
- Eliminate as many unknowns as possible by taking the opportunity to meet teachers, tour the school, and creating an organizational plan for the school year.
- Plan opportunities for students to spend time with classmates before school starts. Students often start the school year with a lot of social anxiety, giving them the opportunity to see friends before day 1 helps them feel more confident!
Wise Words from Our Friends at Little Bear Counseling:
“Back-to-school anxiety is often a sign that a child is facing something important and unfamiliar. As parents, it's tempting to ask a lot of questions or highlight all the exciting parts of the new year — and if we're being honest, sometimes we're a little more excited about school starting than our kids are. But when a child is overwhelmed, they usually need to feel understood before they can hear anything else. Rather than trying to uncover the reason or convince them to feel differently, start with simple acknowledgment: 'This feels like a lot right now.' Feeling understood helps children build confidence in their ability to navigate hard emotions and new experiences.” -Rachael Maher, MS, LCPC, LMFT
Establish an Effective School-Week Routine:
- Unfortunately, grades matter from day one, and getting behind is easy to do in the chaos of the first few weeks of school. Get into a rhythm of checking in on assignments daily to set expectations for the rest of the school year.
- Set goals around effort and completion rather than perfection. Modelling the importance of effort and timely completion enforces a student’s agency and prevents the overwhelm and avoidance caused by expected perfection.
- Frame the importance of organization around freedom rather than punishment. Having systems, writing things down, and planning are often seen as busy work by students - showing them that being organized can save them time and energy to spend on all the things they love doing can be a game changer.
- Students should be checking both Canvas and Powerschool daily to confirm assignments and to dos - encourage this habit from day 1!
Help Your Student Build Executive Functioning Skills:
Students have more information available to them and are more tech savvy than ever, but that is only so valuable if they don’t have the skills to execute their ideas and goals. Executive functioning is put to the test at the beginning of every school year as students enter a new classroom with new expectations. Although school used to be the best place for students to develop these skills, there is an increasing need for students to practice these skills outside of school.
Harvard researchers explored what exactly students need from their mentor relationships in order to build critical executive functioning skills. The following characteristics were found to be most critical:
- Support for student efforts.
- To have the skills modeled by parents and educators.
- The opportunity to engage in activities that require extensive practice. It is very important for students to experience the discomfort of gaining complex skills in a safe environment.
- A consistent, reliable presence that students can trust, such as a parent, tutor, or teacher.
- Guidance toward gradual independence.
- Protection from chaos, overstimulation, and chronic stressors. Proper executive functioning can only be developed and utilized when someone has a calm nervous system.
Make the Most of Study Time:
Students are rarely taught how to study effectively and often fall into what experts call a “familiarity trap”, which means that when reviewing their notes, they recognize the information and assume that means they have retained it and are ready to be tested on it. However, when the test comes, it turns out they cannot generate or recall the information they need. Here are a few strategies to make study-time count:
- Recall: Testing oneself is critical for retention and should be practiced in a low stakes environment like study time. Our brain’s logic centers shut down in high stress environments - creating the testing scenario at home can help students feel calm when test day comes.
- Spaced repetition: Research shows that cramming does not help with a student’s long term retention. Experts recommend rotating through subjects about every 40 minutes with breaks in between.
- Teaching: There are many levels to understanding a topic, one of those levels is being able to explain a topic clearly to someone else. Students gain retention by practicing how to explain a topic to a friend or family member.
- Embrace frustration: The goal is to find ways to study that are active, rather passive. Active studying can be frustrating because it requires trial, error, and repetition, which is exactly what students need to retain information.
As academic mentors, we emphasize the importance of taking a holistic approach to the learning experience. That means considering a student’s mental health, circumstances, and goals. We also believe that learning and being a successful student are skills that can be learned. It is always our goal to build up a student’s confidence and to take pressure off of the family dynamic. We hope that the above advice can be helpful for Bozeman families as the new school year approaches!
As academic mentors, we emphasize the importance of taking a holistic approach to the learning experience.